Introduction

I am new to the notion of Open Learning and in this blog, I’ll discuss how far I’ve come with my understanding of the notion and what more I need to know to ascertain my position using Cronin’s labels of, practitioner, researcher, advocate, critic, wonderer, agnostic or something else. Also, needless to say, a two-week exposure in ONL barely scrapes the surface of all the knowledge and discussions available in the literature. 

The Philosophy Behind Open Education

I agree the philosophy behind open education that “universities’ knowledge should be freely accessible and openly available to everyone” (Weller, 2014) is a noble one. It levels the playing field and makes it possible for anyone and everyone to access knowledge for their development and empowerment. I hence fully agree with UNESCO (2019) that open education “democratizes and increases access to education and knowledge.  

Meanings of “Openness”

A starting place for me to think about opening learning was to work out what it meant. I found the discussion of the interpretations of “openness” offered by Cronin (2017) shown in Figure 1 are useful. Her interpretations include

• open-door policies on admissions such as those that guide Open Universities
• open as free resources such as those available on YouTube videos, podcasts, MOOCs
• open educational resources (OER) where licences are granted for remix of materials
• open educational practices (OEP) which promote the creation of OERs through innovative pedagogical models.

The Operation of Open Education

The next question I asked myself was how the notion of “openness” is operationalised. I found the description on operation by Open Education helpful for a start. The Open Education Consortium describes this form of education as “resources, tools, and practices that employ a framework of open sharing to improve educational access and effectiveness worldwide.” This suggests to me that a framework is needed to operationalize the educational ideal of open learning and that this framework can help me identify open learning practices that are either more or less effective in achieving the ideals of open learning.

Since the key attribute of “openness” according to Weller (2014) is freedom– for individuals to

• access content
• reuse it in ways they see fit
• develop new methods of working
• take advantage of the opportunities the digital, networked world offers

I think it is necessary to explore some of the considerations that guide the practice in openness.  

Some Considerations about Open Learning Practices

• Quality Assurance and Quality of Learning in OERs

While there is a huge financial benefit for students who are provided access to open courses, the responsibility lies with the service provider to assess the suitability of the materials for the end user as students are unlikely to be able to make judgements on the quality and suitability of content to meet their learning needs without the help of the expert content creators or facilitators. As such, it is important for creators of courses and end users to use and provide explicit frameworks to ensure the quality assurance of open resources. Some of the frameworks I’ve come across include the CARE Framework and TEMOA Rubric to provide benchmarks for evaluating the quality of open resources.

Other indicators suggested in the literature (Yuan & Recker, 2019) include

• Quality of explanation of the subject matter
• Quality of instructional practice and exercises
• Accuracy
• Clarity
• Appropriateness
• Learning goal alignment
• Reusability

In addition to using quality assurance frameworks, I would also consider how to measure the quality of learning to make the courses worthwhile for learners. This latter would be more critical for learners seeking accreditation through open learning. It would matter less, if learners are less serious about their learning (the literature suggests a high dropout rate in open courses). This then begs the question- with the broad spectrum of learners who participate in open learning, how would we pitch the standards of our courses and ensure the reputation of our universities are not compromised.  

• Academic Integrity, Contribution, Attribution and OEPs

While OEPs such as open pedagogies promote student engagement in work that go beyond the boundaries of the classroom, as discussed in Open Learning: What It Is and How You Can Benefit (northeastern.edu) and encourage collaborations that the digital and networked world offers, there issues around academic integrity, the recognition of contributions and related accordance of attribution which need to be teased out.

With respect to academic integrity, while creative commons licences require the acknowledgement of originality, I wonder if this is open to abuse and if there are regulatory systems that can actually prevent this form of abuse.

I have witnessed how students could abuse freedoms with openness in my university where we saw plagiarism scores on Turnitin go up. Students and probably staff need to be coached on where the lines are drawn between original contribution and adaptations how these works need to be cited. Coming from a world where, we have strived very hard to make original contributions to academia, I am not confident that everyone knows how to use open licenced materials responsibly. I recently had a bad experience which opened my eyes to the fact that the boundary lines between originality and adaptation seemed not to be understood – a colleague used my original set of slides for herself by changing some words without asking for any permission from me. It was good that she presented her material to the team first and I could point out that she needed to use her own original slide deck for her component of the team presentation.

With regards to academic contribution and attribution, the question of when and if academics are ready to make their resources open is a critical one since publications, including textbook-writing, form part of their contribution to their field. This is a tricky question and I wonder if there can be an inbuilt system in the process of open content creation that is able to maintain the attribution accorded to the various parties. This should then show up in citations and prevent freeloaders from trying to gain recognition for materials they have contributed very little to.

Conclusion

To conclude my brief discussion, I would say that from what I’ve read so far that I am still a critic of open learning. Though I am completely for the idea of democratizing education by making it accessible, affordable, available and attainable to the masses, and open learning is one way to achieve this, I’m not convinced that we have sufficiently teased out some of the considerations I’ve raised to truly be able as educators to say that open learning is on the whole worthwhile and that we are not compromising on quality of content or learning,  and that we have adequately coached learners in the norms of academic integrity and ethics. Having said that, I do not want to throw the baby out from the bathwater. I would say that open learning has great value in contexts where learning is not a high stakes goal and where there are alternative ways of recognising, measuring and rewarding learning. I would need more time to think about what these contexts might be in my own practice and to continue to grapple with the issues I’ve raised in this blog to be able to make more informed decisions about open practices in relation to my own practice.

References

Cronin, C.(2017).Open Education , Open Questions. Educase Review 52, no 6 (November/December 2017)

Farrell, O., Breen, E., Brunton, J., Cox, R., Costello, E., Delaney, L., Gallagher, E., Smyth, V. (2021). Go Open: A Beginners Guide to Open Education. Dublin: DCU. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.4593103

Yuan, M., & Recker, M. (2019). Does audience matter? Comparing teachers’ and non-teachers’ application and perception of quality rubrics for evaluating open educational resources. Educational Technology Research and Development, 67(1), 39–61.